http://www.databreaches.net/?p=4079
“Operation Plastic Pipe Line” nabs 45 in massive international ring
May 14, 2009 by admin Filed under: Financial Sector, ID Theft, U.S.
Queens District Attorney Richard A. Brown announced today that an international forged credit card and identity theft ring based in the New York metropolitan area has been successfully dismantled following the indictment this week of forty-five individuals.
… The full press release can be found here (pdf)
[From the press release:
Account preparers – responsible for activating the accounts, which usually involved placing a phone call to a financial institution and impersonating the account holder by pretending to be calling from the account holder’s home phone. This was accomplished by using a Spoof Card, which allows a person to change the number that appears on the receiver’s caller ID and can make a man’s voice sound like a woman’s and vice versa. The account preparer would also change a PIN number, change the mailing address, add a secondary card user and/or increase the account’s credit limit;
Account maintainers – responsible for paying off accounts in order to avoid fraud detection and increase credit lines. The maintainer would use funds from one account to pay off another account to keep it viable and to steadily increase its credit limit, at which point all the funds from the account would be drained; or
Account washers – responsible for obtaining as much pedigree information on an account holder as possible so that other account preparers could then use the information to access the victim accounts in order to take over the accounts.
Interesting. Their security wasn't breached but so many userid/passwords were compromised it looks like it was. (Phishing scam? Other?) How would you address that in your “guidelines?”
http://www.databreaches.net/?p=4066
Amway responds: “Our house has not been broken into”
May 14, 2009 by admin Filed under: Business Sector, Other, U.S.
Yesterday, I posted an entry about a recent breach reported by Amway Global that seemed essentially identical to a breach that they reported last year. I questioned whether Quixtar/Amway had correctly identified the source of the earlier breach and perhaps failed to address it. I had called Amway to discuss the breaches, but had not received any return call. Yesterday afternoon, Amway did return the call, and I put the question to them. Here is their response, in its entirety, which I received this morning, and I am pleased to give them the opportunity to explain and defend their security:
Are they saying they treat everyone like terrorists?
http://www.bespacific.com/mt/archives/021376.html
May 14, 2009
Statistics on Terrorism Arrests and Outcomes Great Britain
Home Office Statistical Bulletin: Statistics on Terrorism Arrests and Outcomes, Great Britain 13 May 2009 - 11 September 2001 to 31 March 2008.
"For the period between the start of the data collection on 11 September 2001 to 31 March 2008: There were 1,471 terrorism arrests. This excludes 38 arrests made between the introduction of the Terrorism Act 2000 on 19 February 2001 and 11 September 2001 and 119 stops at Scottish ports under Schedule 7 of the Terrorism Act 2000."
[From the article:
The proportion of those arrested (35%) who were charged is similar to that for other criminal offences with 31% of those aged 18 and over arrested for indictable offences prosecuted.
Let me explain about backups. This is not a backup. A backup is stored AWAY from the operations area to ensure you can recover from a disaster. This is a disaster, they couldn't recover – QED these ain't backups!
http://it.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=09/05/15/0138204&from=rss
Hacker Destroys Avsim.com, Along With Its Backups
Posted by timothy on Friday May 15, @01:17AM from the giving-you-the-benefit-of-their-bad-childhoods dept. Security Data Storage Technology
el americano writes
"Flight Simulator community website Avsim has experienced a total data loss after both of their online servers were hacked. The site's founder, Tom Allensworth, explained why 13 years of community developed terrains, skins, and mods will not be restored from backups: 'Some have asked whether or not we had back ups. Yes, we dutifully backed up our servers every day. Unfortunately, we backed up the servers between our two servers. The hacker took out both servers, destroying our ability to use one or the other back up to remedy the situation.'" [So would have any other “room wide” disaster. Bob]
Our water is polluted with prescription drugs flushed into the system, now I hear I can't even breath? Are you sure Global Warming is our biggest problem?
http://science.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=09/05/14/1556244&from=rss
Study Shows Cocaine And Other Drugs In Spanish Air
Posted by samzenpus on Thursday May 14, @02:41PM from the can-you-smell-the-party dept.
If you live in Madrid or Barcelona, you might not notice the air pollution due to your contact buzz according to a new study. The Superior Council of Scientific Investigations found the air in those cities to be laced with at least five drugs: amphetamines, opiates, cannabinoids, lysergic acid and most prominently cocaine. Researchers found cocaine in concentrations between 29 and 850 picogram per cubic meter of air. The group stresses that the air samples were taken in high drug areas and don't represent most of the air in the cities.
Be aware Microsoft, Google (and cloud computing) is coming...
http://news.cnet.com/8301-13846_3-10240046-62.html
With Valeo deal, Google Apps gains business cred
by Dave Rosenberg May 13, 2009 1:22 PM PDT
Gmail may not yet have the same footprint as Microsoft Exchange, but megadeals such as a recently announced 30,000-seat installation at Valeo prove that large enterprises are comfortable running applications in the cloud.
Related The downside of Cloud Computing. (Maybe not, they're probably better at keeping their systems running than you are...)
Google suffers major failure
Various Google Apps start kicking back in after widespread outage this morning
By Sharon Gaudin May 14, 2009 01:12 PM ET
The next big boondoggle? Nothing attracts the sharks like cash in the water...
http://news.cnet.com/8301-13860_3-10241114-56.html?part=rss&subj=news&tag=2547-1_3-0-5
Tech giants line up for e-health dollars
by Ina Fried May 14, 2009 12:18 PM PDT
With billions in stimulus dollars available to help doctors and hospitals digitize their health records, it stands to reason that tech companies want to make spending that money as easy as possible.
… President Obama's stimulus package provides on the order of $20 billion for health care technology, with the central focus being nudging hospitals and doctors to move their records from manila folders to computers. Even with the money, though, it's seen as a daunting task.
Attention Class Action lawyers: I am not leasing these books (unlike my software). Some stranger (claims to be the publisher) has just made my purchase worthless. Sic 'em!
http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=09/05/14/1356253&from=rss
Remote Kill Flags Surface In Kindle
Posted by CmdrTaco on Thursday May 14, @10:14AM from the because-they-can dept. Media Books
PL/SQL Guy writes
"The Kindle has a number of 'remote kill' flags built in to the hardware that, among other things, allow the text-to-speech function to be disabled at any time on a book-by-book basis. 'Beginning yesterday, Random House Publishers began to disable text-to-speech remotely. The TTS function has apparently been remotely disabled in over 40 works so far.' But what no one at Amazon will discuss is what other flags are lurking in the Kindle format: is there a 'read only once' flag? A 'no turning the pages backwards' flag?"
Related? One of those minor glitches that need to be ironed out. Perhaps I should add my blog at $1.99 a month?
How The Kindle Now Lets You Steal This Blog
by Erick Schonfeld on May 14, 2009
Amazon’s new blog publishing program has a major flaw: it lets anyone steal other people’s blogs and charge readers for them.
Yesterday, Amazon opened up the ability to publish a blog on the Kindle to anyone who sets up an account. Today, anyone can claim a blog even if it is not theirs, charge a subscription fee for it, and collect the proceeds. In fact, somebody already did just this with TechCrunch.
They don't look like tools I'll use, but you never know what you can add to the Swiss Army folder.
http://freelancefolder.com/35-online-tools-to-make-your-freelance-career-easier/
35 Online Tools That Make Your Freelance Career Easier
Posted May 14, 2009
Simple Hacks
http://www.pakblogger.com/youtube-videos-not-available-in-your-country-watch-blocked-youtube-videos/
Youtube Videos Not Available In your Country? Watch Blocked Youtube Videos
May 15, 2009
Simple Hack
http://www.makeuseof.com/tag/how-to-view-private-facebook-profiles/
How to View Private Facebook Profiles
May. 14th, 2009 By Ryan Dube
This site has a lot of potential for my website classes. CAUTION: It's in Beta, so it's a bit twitchy...
ecoder
what ecoder is
ecoder is an open-source web-based code editor, with real-time colour syntax highlighting, which allows multiple documents to be edited directly online at the same time.
Swiss Army folder Has potential. Not for my students but it would make my handouts seem more professional.
http://www.killerstartups.com/Web-App-Tools/pdfmaker-co-cc-create-your-own-pdfs
PDFMaker.co.cc - Create Your Own PDFs
Do you want to create your own PDF files? PDF files are extremely useful when it comes to giving a more professional look to all your works, as well as to being protected from unwanted copies or modifications.
… This solution has many advantages like the fact that you do not need to install or purchase any software.
WOW! You should take a look at this one. Might be more useful than Google in many areas! (Don't let the headline bother you, this isn't a geeky thing.)
http://teachingcollegemath.com/?p=941
What if there was a Google for Math?
What if you could go to a free and readily available website and enter an equation, an expression, a question about math, a request to analyze data, or anything else, and the site would answer your question, elaborate on it, give you all the steps for the mathematical work, etc.?
Did that make you uneasy or excited?
Well, ready or not, it’s going online at 7pm CST today, and I think we ought to pay some attention to this. http://www.wolframalpha.com/index.html
It does have the potential to seriously wreak havoc on the way we teach math today if students can simply copy all their work from an A.I. website.
[At least watch this screencast: http://www.wolframalpha.com/screencast/introducingwolframalpha.html
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